The US and Syria held high-level talks today the day after Washington offered to restore full diplomatic relations by appointing an ambassador for the first time in five years.

President Bashar al-Assad met William Burns, the US under-secretary of state, in Damascus, where Burns said they enjoyed candid talks. "I have no illusions about the challenges. But my meeting with President Assad made me hopeful that we can make progress together in the interest of both of our countries," Burns said.

Washington named Robert Ford, a career diplomat, as its new ambassador to Syria. The US withdrew its ambassador in 2005 in protest at the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syrian intelligence, which has a network of agents inside Lebanon, was suspected of carrying out the killing.

With so many of Barack Obama's initiatives in the Middle East stalled, rapprochment with Syria potentially offers an opportunity to claim some progress.

The US would like Syria to break its military alliance with Iran, to stop meddling in Lebanese affairs and to end its support for the Lebanese militia group Hizbollah. It would also like Syria to help the US more with intelligence-gathering, including the flow of militants across the border into Iraq.

A senior US counter-terrorism officiial, Daniel Benjamin, also attended the meeting with Assad and stayed on for a further day of talks with Syrian intelligence officials.

The Syrian president, since taking power almost a decade ago, has at times indicated that he wants to improve relations with both the US and Israel and at other times backtracked.

The US too has sent mixed signals. Although the US left the ambassador's post unfilled, it kept the embassy in Damascus open. But the Obama administration last year re-imposed sanctions against Syria and kept it on the list of countries alleged to be sponsoring terrorism.

The proposed return of a US ambassador is the first real sign of an improvement in US-Syrian relations.